I actually liked the rating system, but to me the Britannians strike as an empire caught between the traditions of old and the systems and fuctionality of the new - so modern classification vessels would warp into battle with age old ships of the line and everything in between.

Thinking along these lines I might move onto some frigate class vessels next, after seeing what everyone else comes out with first.

Caught between two systems of thinking, the Oxford class is known as both a 'Fifth-Rater' and by the slightly less demeaning 'Heavy Destroyer'. Neither particularly old or new, it was introduced shortly after the first Immortal Emissaries appeared on the brik-verse.

A multi-role vessel if ever there was one, it is capable of close in capital ship defence, mid range brawling, and long range sniping. The vessels most potent weapon being it's Ram Accelerator, capable of direct hits at long range.

The most well known ship of the class was the Etonite Prick, infamous for leading an entire squadron of support vessels into a black hole. This in no way is to be perceived as a metaphor.

After ten months of operation, the Edinburgh Class Light-Assault-Dreadnaught has proven itself against a few of the foes of the Empire - the Britannians showing their might against the Scythian Empire in particular - the ships impressive capacity would blow away entire strike groups of Monarch class battleships and Despot class Cruisers. In recent months however, a series of glaring design flaws have appeared in the design.

First of all, the armoured doors designed to protect the ships "Hellhammer" cannon are prone to locking and jamming over time due to the immense recoil created by the epic cannon - which has lead to their removal on almost all ships of the class. Going into combat and being unable to use the ships primary weapon has claimed more than a few Edinburgh class ships in a recent sortie with a Scythian Deity Class Star-Juggernaught, which left only 2 surviving Britannian ships out of a wolf-pack of 9. Another removal is the missile bay doors for the same reason, which have been removed and replaced with another loading rack for the now exterior-mounted compliment of 198 Cavorite Enhanced Tri-Nuclear missiles (adding another 66 missiles to the existing 132 on the MK-I of the class).

The entire super structure of the ship has been rebuilt from scratch to efficiently handle the recoil of the Hellhammer, which has now lead to the addition of considerably more armour plating and another two Heavy Battle Cannons - and the ships bridge has been moved back along the super structure of the ship to be mounted behind the missile launchers, widened and then given another layer of shielding - these advantages together giving the ships bridge crew and captain additional protection and battlefield awareness.

Another critical flaw in the class was its lack of fighter and bomber interception abilities, as the vessel was armed for capitol-ship to capitol-ship only weaponry, so with the existing alterations to the ships structure, the black hole generators that had been provided by the Immortal Empire have been moved and mounted further within the ships armoured shell - and the rear section of the ship now has a considerably sized hangar bay for the storage, maintenance and launch capacity of a moderately sized wing of fighters and bomber craft to protect the fighting ship of the line.

The only major flaw in the design is now its engine structure - which could not be replaced or upgraded without putting considerable stress on the ring-mounting array. Placing anything more powerful onto the existing mounts would risk ripping the entire ship to pieces, even with the considerable upgrades to the ships internal layout.

As a result, the Edinburgh MK-II has traded its speed- for fire-power, armour, force projection and durability.

Very impressive Scythe. As usual, your work has inspired me to go beyond Mediocre and to aspire to awesome territory.

Although, I have a request, if you will. Scythia and the Brittanians are the people that got me into brikwars, one Red sleek and clean, one bulky and giant, spewing smoke and fire. To that end, I just wanted to ask if there are any opening in the Brittanian hierarchy or ships built that I could fill. I realize I sound like a N00B asking if I could join the big leagues, but who knows. Maybe I can make cool ships too?

EDIT: Scratch all that. I just read maybe the- Fifth post in the thread saying that anyone can make Brittanian ships.

I have returned with my Sample. Not my best work, but I quite like this one.

Avonmouth Class Fourth Rater

This is a quite old ship in the Britannian Arsenal, designed long ago by Lord Admiral Langhorne under specific orders to have a ship that could crush any heathens he wanted in a massive amount of firepower.

Naturally, when the engineering crew was told that, they loaded a ring onto a power plant, and loaded it with as many turrets a could fit, even breaking down some of the newer Gatling Railgun Turrets into a smaller package to fit.

Of course, that was a very long time ago. Now, these ships are fairly common in older fleets, delivering a powerful punch in the massive broadside. As well, you can see the large bridge indicative of the design team, as well as the Aetherophore, sending Morse Code in small bursts of photons flying trough space. It, unfortunately, does not work at FTL speeds, so they rely on either retrofitting to get FTL messaging systems or courier ships. However the Aetherophore is virtually impossible to intercept, so it has certain advantages in battle.

Here you can see the sheer number of guns put onto this ship. In a full broadside, 15 turrets can be aligned to hit an enemy ship with a devastating broadside, not to mention the two Gatling Turrets built into the underside. The one downfall of this is the lack of spinal cannon, as there was simply not enough room.

Here are the cooling towers for the massive reactors, as well as the twin large Chemical Rock Motors propel the ship forward along with Reaction Wheels for turning.

____

So, this is my first try at a Britannian Ship. I decided I'd go with a "Old Old ships getting thrown into the fray with all of your new fangled craft" type thing, I'll see how that turns out.

Actually, that is a damn sexy little fourth rater - I'm surprised I missed this the first time around. I like the amount of work you could throw into something to make it not only look like an advanced ship, but an -old- advanced ship . . . it just feels like a damn sexy old broad.

Have you uploaded this to the wiki yet newcowboy? This deserves to be added to a full fleet group, especially now rings are now the Britannian Navy's "thing".